


Losing My Religion

by wolvesofbrooklyn



Category: Metal Gear
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-20
Updated: 2015-09-20
Packaged: 2018-04-22 13:52:17
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,810
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4837634
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wolvesofbrooklyn/pseuds/wolvesofbrooklyn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Naked Snake's transition from ardent believer to disillusioned manipulative mercenary leader Big Boss as told through his shifting relationships with The Boss and Eva. Heavy religious themes.</p>
<p>Largely Snake Eater era, with references to the events of The Boss's AI in Peace Walker and some of the events of The Phantom Pain (albeit not the major ending spoiler).</p>
<p>Title from the REM Song of the same name.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Losing My Religion

She’s a blinding light in the darkness, her voice like sticky sweet honey above the guttural rumble of a motorcycle. 

 

Eva is far from an angel, but her arrival inspires the same mixture of fear and anticipation, her light fracturing the cover of night into a thousand shards of light and shadow. On the rare occasions Big Boss takes to ruminate on the events of that fateful mission part of him tries pretend things were better ensconced in darkness, before he met Eva.

 

Pretending never did get him very far, the unromantic truth was that he’d been betrayed. Cast down by his own idol, The Boss abandoned him and their cause in a graveyard of lilies, made him an accomplice in her sins. As much as it chafes him, he can admit he was young and foolish, that back then he had always had trouble navigating when the world was caught in indecisive twilight. 

 

He rid himself of such weaknesses decades ago.

 

To say that meeting Eva was a surprise wasn’t an understatement. There were plans in place, none of which accounted for a woman. She wasn’t supposed to be there, but then again neither was Eve. In Genesis, the first woman was an afterthought, created not like Adam but for and from him. And hadn’t Snake, as Major Zero had quipped, broken a rib not too long ago? 

 

“Where is Adam?”

 

Eva doesn’t answer the question. Instead, she reacts with practiced precision to the threat at hand, her Mauser sweeping in front of her, firing with deadly accuracy. The men advancing on Snake are easily dispatched. Does that answer your question? He can almost hear the quirk of a smile. He doesn’t return it. The dead and dying around him aren’t a testament of trust, her actions could easily be a gambit. It’s not miraculous, it’s good timing. 

 

But the reality remains that she did save his life so he doesn’t press like he should.

 

She advances upon him with unwarranted boldness, boots crunching on the ground. Snake tenses, ready to fight if necessary. She must have wild streak of courage in her to approach him without hesitation. He doesn’t trust her and she knows it, but it doesn’t change her trajectory in the slightest.

 

Once his eyes adjust he can make out the body behind the voice. She’s beautiful even apart from the light she casts, Snake realizes thickly. Sultry and voluptuous, Eva has the body and affectations of a temptress. She reveals herself easily, unzipping her jumpsuit for him, allowing his glance to linger on her breasts, the line of her neck. Bathsheba out of water.

 

They move through the cleared bunker, Eva half explains some points, ignores other. She gives him a gun and alludes to the things she could do for him before urging him to sleep. Tawdry flirtations he isn’t entirely sure he believes don’t inspire the lust she wants. Snake doesn’t entertain adultery, his faith is placed elsewhere and he is anything if not devout.

 

He still loves her after all.

 

They make a surprisingly good team, Eva and him. She’s sharp and quick on her feet, Snake doesn’t need to worry about her wellbeing when they part, although he can admit a small part of him does. His feelings don’t unsettle him. Eva’s alluring, but he remains the ardent disciple of another. He can stay close to her in the interim, live with her in the in the moments of his trial then break away when his loyalty’s been proven. 

 

Eva’s guidance is sure and he follows her words through the murky undergrowth of the jungle, the ominous laboratories, the long mountain climb. She isn’t telling him everything, Snake knows that much, but he grows to care for his maybe Delilah, knowing full well that she may hunting for ways to destroy him. He respects her as a player in whatever game she’s playing, accepting her allegiance as a temporary aid, but not counting on it surviving until the end.

 

Her come ons slide off of him like raindrops off church shingles, effortlessly, though they tend to linger a fraction too long. Snake can hear them from where he stands, see them if he deigns to look outside, but he’s caught inside his own cathedral, his spiralling crisis of conviction. There has to be an explanation for The Boss’s actions, something he had missed. Eva’s there but in so many ways she remains outside of it all.

 

There’s only so long he can look for reasons before the sharp sting of confusion and hurt runs his heart ragged.

 

Eva’s curiosity feels like an ambush. Do you love her? It seems that for every question she doesn’t answer, she poses one altogether more difficult for him. Where Snake wants a name, Eva wants hymns and allegories. Sacred texts to pore over, to study. She presses. Is she your lover or your idol or does she live somewhere in between? Snake doesn’t bite. The intimacy between him and his mentor defies definition. He evades Eva’s inquisition pointedly.

 

There are parts of him he will never lay bare.

 

In his memories, The Boss is only ever standing in the clearing. They were together for years, endless missions and trials. He can still remember her even voice across the fire, the rare rough laughter that arose from day’s exhaustion. There was no distance between them then, their lives bled together willingly. That day she stood apart from him and it sears away all other versions of her. 

 

When she opened her mouth to speak, the easy breezes of the clearing paused, as if permitting her voice to carry. He remembers feeling frozen. Her last sermon was one he couldn’t understand, rationalize, or follow. Still, he listened to her because it was all he’d ever done.

 

It’s a shared truism between faith and temptation that they are ultimately decided by the actions made in a moment of weakness. It is only when someone is brought to their knees, that they are tested, that they look above for salvation or plummet downward into oblivion. He thinks of this when he returns to the safehouse, his hand still shaking as though he can still feel the recoil of that final bullet.

 

He doesn’t know whether it’s sacrilege or sanctuary that spurs him to Eva. Whether or not he hopes to find something within her he’s lost, or lose himself entirely in her embrace. Her kiss is cloying and heady like communion wine and he drinks until everything goes dull around him. Snake’s can barely focus, but Eva anchors him with a low voice and a firm hold. She takes him gently, straddling and engulfing him in overwhelming heat. 

 

Her hips buck against his until the world’s reduced to sensation, until they come apart together. 

 

He can’t recall the moments afterward. Big Boss supposes Eva was kind, though he can’t exactly put his finger on anything she had said or done. All he remembers is the relief of submersion, the assurance that either death or resurrection awaited him on the other side. Afterward was irrelevant, clarity brought grief, though exhaustion followed quick on its heels.

 

Snake isn’t given a choice to deliberate on whether or not their union meant anything. When he wakes the space beside him is cool, the warmth of the body once present long since leached away. Eva leaves an explanation in her wake, a veritable bible in the form of a recording. Snake sits and listens to it, the choppy way Eva’s voice breaks and crackles and her own anguish bleeds through shiny black tape.

 

He’s glad, he numbly realizes, that Eva isn’t here for this. He doesn’t think he could bear the confession in person. The recording ends with a click. Snake processes for a moment then rewinds it, the whirring sound too loud in the safehouse and listens to it again. And then once more. There is never any satisfaction in the prophetic words.

 

Eva is gone and so is The Boss.

 

Years later, Eva disappears in Hanoi. It is without question that Snake endeavours a rescue. Something exists between them, something he doesn’t believe in anymore, that will never exist again, that he must honour. Eva is worth saving. Her smile isn’t beautiful like it once was, but it is honest in it’s crooked pleasure. As he swings her over her shoulder, she laughs to herself at their reunion. You saved me, he thinks, the least I can do is return the favour.

 

His reunion with The Boss is less sweet.

 

After Eva, he had attempted to piece together the shattered remnants of his idol, to slot the jagged sharp edges into something familiar. But they were too sharp and too small for his broad hands, only good for cuts and slashes, slicing his fingertips to ribbons. He’s no stranger to blood drawn and It doesn’t stop him. 

 

Her scar becomes his scar, her bandana his own up until even the traces of her soul abandon him again, sinking in their metal prison into the depths of that Nicaraguan lake. He hopes the silt buries whatever cowardice and treachery Strangelove resurrected. There had been the idle flicker of hope in the clearing, but the flame is extinguished by rising waters. All that was left of his faith bubbling up to the surface to disappear into thin air.

 

Eva keeps in sparse contact, sending tapes that she hopes will soothe his restless soul. It’s too late for such comforts, but he listens anyway. He can tell in her voice that Eva loves her subject, that somewhere in those private conversations she had been converted to The Boss’s brand of heresy. He can’t hold it against her, allows space for her misjudgment. For all of her wariness, he knows Eva is a romantic to the end.

 

Big Boss no longer needs a church to rest his weary head, a figure to atone for his sins. He leaves faith to younger men, inspiring their adoration and devotion though never emulating it. There’s something in the set of his spine, the glint in his eyes, that makes people see things. Victory, triumph maybe. Salvation. Her words never meant anything, neither do his. All that matters is that when he says “die for me”, they do.

 

They all fall in line, piece by piece. Ocelot and Kaz compete to prove their devotion, but Eva remains apart. It is only through the protections of her body that the sickness they call “sons” survive until birth. He would have killed anyone else. He thinks she knew as much.  

 

She recovers his body after the crash and he keeps his distance. There are arguments that lay in the vast distance between them, but neither will put the first foot forward.

 

They both know what it’s like to see an idol fall.

**Author's Note:**

> I sincerely tried to think of a different title, but the song fits so well I couldn't help being achingly cliche. I apologize.
> 
> It's a bit of a spiritual successor to another one of my fics on my other account, "the father the son and the holy ghost" albeit with a lot more of a focus on the religious imagery and the nature of The Boss's relationship with Snake. So if you liked this one that one may be up your alley.
> 
> I do not currently have a beta, so I apologize for any glaring mistakes!
> 
> Comments always appreciated :)


End file.
